By Yun-hua Chen.
I don’t want to make a film about political discourses. I don’t want to preach to people. My purpose as a human being is to define and redefine my position in the world. How can we live with absolutely beautiful and totally awful things at the same time?”
Following Sylvain George’s previous work, Nuit obscure – Feuillets sauvages (2022), showcased in the “Fuori concorso” program of the Locarno Film Festival, the sequel, Nuit obscure – Au revoir ici, n’importe où, finds its place this year in the International Competition of Locarno. Once again, the focus sharpens on European immigration policies, with its documentary lens honed on Melilla, a locale steeped in colonial history, now bearing witness to the post-colonial tragedies of immigration.
While the predecessor delved into the lives of adult men, this narrative pivots to minors. Primarily boys, these children navigate the streets of Melilla, unchaperoned by adults and almost invisible to the rest of the world, living by their own set of rough and tumble rules, seemingly unruly to the outer world. Sylvain George’s lens attentively traces their daily rhythms: banding together in search of sustenance, occasionally congregating to cook with a shared pan and concealed spices, cleaning their dishes in modest water streams on the ground, daring border crossings while eluding the police, exchanging whispers of those who’ve succeeded in crossing borders, and at times, finding themselves in verbal and physical scuffles. Their defiant visages standing in stark contrast to Melilla’s grandiose historical edifices, their coming-of-age is a harsh lesson in the law of the jungle—the older and stronger command authority, while the younger ones band together for protection. They forge groups resembling families, though hierarchy is dictated by age and might, and when they are in the mood, they share tales of their former lives almost like memories of their previous lives.
Directed, written, filmed, and edited by Sylvain George, Nuit obscure – Au revoir ici, n’importe où is a labor of love. Patient and attentive, Sylvain George’s camera unveils these children that are nearly invisible to the world, engaging with them at eye level. He runs alongside them, leaps with them, sharing in the fragments and duration of their experiences, empathizing with their hopes and despairs in equal measures. His images, meanwhile, exude a profound beauty and embody true cinematic artistry. While pieced together from fragments of these children’s moments, the film provides an immersive opportunity to witness what these children see and share in their experiences. At the Locarno Film Festival, Sylvain George elucidates his filmmaking process in a well-reflected and philosophical manner.
You mentioned that this film is very important to you. Can you talk about its importance?
It is a continuation of what I have been trying to do since the beginning of my career as a filmmaker, about the policies of migration in Europe. My first step was trying to understand how this kind of policies works on the ground, and the consequences of these policies in different parts of Europe. I started my work in the north of France, in a place called Calais, between 2007 and 2010. I made two feature-length films there. This film is the follow-up of that work. I started working on this film just after 2011. The process was very long. It took five years to do the production, and another five years of shooting and editing. The idea is to try to understand the consequences of these policies in this town, Melilla, the last Spanish colony in Morocco, but also the European colony in Africa. The particularity of this town is that it is situated at the border between Spain and Morocco, that is, between Europe and Africa. There is a lot of complexity around the relationships between Spain and Morocco. In this place, you can find many people who try to reach Europe in illegal ways. The politics of visa is very strict. So, a lot of people from the Maghreb try to jump over the fence to reach Melilla first, and then to Spain and France.
In this town, they say that they fight against the barbarians. The new barbarians right now are Europeans. It’s one of the consequences that the Moroccans face at the same time. This configuration of the concept of “barbarians” is kind of the core idea of the past because this town has been a colony since the 16th century; this town always fights against the “barbarians”. Before, the “barbarians” were Arabic people.
It’s a town where the past and the present can meet each other, and you can find the colonial policy and afterwards the post-colonial policy. It is very clear if you follow the step of these children. In the first part of Nuit Obscure, I present the place and try to follow individuals of 12-18 years old, those young adults. In the second part, the focus is more on the underage people, minors, those children from 10 till 13 years old. You can discover some realities, the policies in Melilla, and the consequences of the policies by seeing them jump over the fences and live on the streets. At the same time, you can see that the past re-emerges. There are some images of statues with inscriptions, which give information about the colonial past of the town. It is connected with the current policies, of course. It’s a résumé of the situation because at the same time it is something which interests me a lot. I don’t want to just make a demonstration. I want to understand the policies.
For example, those young people burnt their ID cards because if their ID cards are found, they would be sent back. At the same time there is this metaphor of burning red lights. If you think a bit, in Europe right now, we say the sea temperature rises, so the sea is burning. You have two visions of the world here. And you have the policy that is burning the sea, which is not a metaphor. Perhaps we have a lot of things to learn from them, the idea that the world is not about exploitation of nature, for example. In the film, I try to discover some realities, destruct the mainstream representation, and perhaps try to show some new realities. Perhaps the “new barbarians” are not whom people often refer to but rather some of the people in Europe who take political decisions. Of course, not in a didactic way; I don’t make propagandistic films. The idea is to understand that, show that, learn a lot of things with them, by the images, by the act of filming, and to try to represent them through the beauty of gestures and voices. By doing that, we can be aware of some representations that are stigmatizing this population.
You stay very close to this group of children throughout the filmmaking process. Can you talk a bit about your filming process?
I have a very small camera, so the idea is to have a good tool to transform it into an aesthetic position. The idea is to have a good and small camera and to be with them. I had to present myself and explain why I had to be with them and why it was important for me. I explained that what I wanted to do was not National Geographic, and the film was not for YouTube or for TV. My purpose was to be with them, to understand the consequences of migration policies through them. So, I was not making a film about childhood, children, immigrant. I don’t want to essentialize any category of individuals. I want to understand how those policies modify the reality, the body, and the story, and how people can react to them and propose something at the same time. I don’t see them as objects or victims. I think they are political and poetic subjects. It’s about the sharing of experiences, theirs and mine. With that, we can have a dialogue based on equality and learn from each other. Some accepted to be in the film, and some did not. Some wanted to be recorded, and I did not pay enough attention to them. Very quickly when they understood who you were and see how you reacted, what kind of human beings you appeared to be, most of them accepted to be recorded.
Sometimes I jumped with them across barbed wires, especially in the first part. I took time to engage in a discussion with them and form some kind of a relationship with them. Time is the key. When you give time to someone, they give time to you. The film step by step appeared in this way. At the beginning I did not have the intention to make a long film. Now the two parts of the films together are 7,5 hours long. They are two autonomous parts, but with a lot of dialogues between them and a circulation of motifs. During the process, step by step, I felt the deep need to take part in it, to deploy the motifs, you know, so a form came along gradually, and I took the decision to make it into two parts.
There are two movements in the film. At the beginning we were with a group, and then gradually two figures stood out. We used a variety of fragments to show their reality, how they lived. There are some repetitions, but no two images are ever the same. In the second movement there are some more close-ups. I explained why they wanted to leave their hometown through their discussion among themselves when they watched video clips and listened to music together. It is a very important scene because they expressed their feelings through the songs that talk about political parties in Morocco and so. It’s also their way of taking some distance from reality, like a distraction.
How do you feel about the cinematic time in the film – whereas their snippets are presented in an episodic manner, we also stay with them in duration?
The colors of black and white, the use of fragments, the play with the images, the speed of the images – sometimes at a normal speed, sometimes in slow motion – all these technical aspects contribute to creating a time that is not linear and not driven by the film plot. Time is a construct where the past meets the present, and the colonial past meets the post-colonial present. It is a convocation of time. Melilla has different layers of realities, from the past to the present. In the first part I created a scene of the place next to a river where children in the second part prepared dinner. It’s a dialogue between the first part and the second one. In the first part you see the places, and in the second part you see the actions. You can see some traces of the past in the places. It’s very interesting to mobilize some thematic resources to translate this meeting between times and this constellation of time. To destroy the idea of linearity, I use the notion of fragments. There is a sense of circulation with them, both in terms of aesthetics and politics. The notion shows the idea of the porosity of the existence. Existence cannot be closed. It’s about being open and having communication.
I don’t want to make a film about political discourses. I don’t want to preach to people. My purpose as a human being is to define and redefine my position in the world. How can we live with absolutely beautiful and totally awful things at the same time? How do we manage our life with some parts of reality that is totally awful? You can be blind. You can accept that. You can agree. You can be totally indifferent. It’s your choice. It’s interesting to try to create a kind of visual criticism about the system, but in a plastic way. By the plastic way, by the images, I would like to propose some new possibilities of the existence and of our living in the world. That’s why I said that these children have something to propose. They are not victims. “Burning the sea” is also a way of showing how some parts of the world and ideologies burn the sea and destroy the planet.
Yun-hua Chen is an independent film scholar. Her work has been published in Film International, Journal of Chinese Cinema, and Directory of World Cinema. Her monograph on mosaic space and mosaic auteurs was published by Neofelis Verlag, and she has contributed to the edited volume Greek Film Noir (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).